I eat, I sleep, I obsess about pop culture.

Tag: Grace Helbig

A long, long time ago (May 2012) in a galaxy far, far away (YouTube) I made a life-long (again, it’s been 3 years) friend (we’ve never met) in Grace Helbig. Under the banner of “Daily Grace,” Grace’s daily (duh) videos ranged from the helpful to the not-so-helpful to the delightfully stupid and always maintained a healthy balance of cleverness, absurdness and just plain weirdness. Though she never truly had a viral hit, she was still considered one of YouTube’s premiere players and accumulated over 2 million subscribers. Early last year, Grace moved her operations from the corporately owned “Daily Grace” to her own channel, “It’s Grace” (it was honestly like a mini-NBC vs. Conan thing, look it up, damn the man etc.) and while starting over from scratch was a risky move, “It’s Grace” hit the one million subscriber mark within two weeks of launching. (And a year and change later, “It’s Grace” has even surpassed “Daily Grace” in total subscribers.) 2014 also saw the release of an independent film starring Grace and fellow YouTubers Mamrie Hart and Hannah Hart (Camp Takota, currently streaming on Netflix!) and Grace’s first book, “Grace’s Guide: The Art of Pretending To Be A Grown Up,” a New York Times Bestseller!

“Cool history lesson, Crystal, but what’s your point?” Well, impatient blog bully in my mind, Grace has gone and got herself a TV show that premieres tomorrow on E! and I’m pretty darn excited about it. Described as “a curious introvert’s nighttime talk show,”The Grace Helbig Show is taping inside a house as opposed to a studio and promises extensive collaboration with her internet audience and oddities like celebrity interviews conducted while Grace runs errands. And for those in the YouTube know, it’s especially exciting because Grace’s frequent collaborator (and overall queen) Mamrie Hart appears in (at least?) the premiere episode. So basically it sounds like “It’s Grace” with a longer runtime and bigger budget so I can’t wait.

And on the semi-serious side, for whatever reason (probably because I watch the majority of web videos in bed with my phone three inches from my face) being a fan of a YouTube star feels a lot more personal than a regular star. When you watch someone on a daily basis for years, you feel weirdly connected to them, like you know them. I’m excited for Grace as an artist and creator to have this new platform but I also feel strangely proud and excited for Grace as a person? It feels like one of my own has been called up to the big leagues and I genuinely hope this show does big things for her.(more…)